


Never Give All The Heart

by bysine



Category: The Social Network
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-28
Updated: 2012-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-06 10:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bysine/pseuds/bysine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which Eduardo is Spiderman and Mark is Iron Man. <i>"You know who I am, what's the point?" Eduardo snaps. "You sent me a Facebook message saying 'Wardo are you Spiderman' and didn't even bother to pick up the phone the fifty times I tried to call you back."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Never give all the heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2418395) by [noreen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noreen/pseuds/noreen)



> I am endlessly grateful to [](http://forochel.livejournal.com/profile)[**forochel**](http://forochel.livejournal.com/) for reading through this as I wrote it and working through plot and ideas with me, to [](http://illuvium.livejournal.com/profile)[**illuvium**](http://illuvium.livejournal.com/) for the cheerleading and troubleshooting, to [](http://yay-box.livejournal.com/profile)[**yay_box**](http://yay-box.livejournal.com/) for reading early chunks of this and being thoroughly encouraging.

**Title:** Never Give All The Heart  
 **Fandom:** The Social Network  
 **Rating:** PG-13  
 **Disclaimer:** The characters here are based on those portrayed in the film.  
 **Word count:** 17000  
 **Summary:** AU in which Eduardo is Spiderman and Mark is Iron Man. _"You know who I am, what's the point?" Eduardo snaps. "You sent me a Facebook message saying 'Wardo are you Spiderman' and didn't even bother to pick up the phone the fifty times I tried to call you back."_  
 **Warnings:** Language, violence. Spoilers for _The Social Network_ , _Iron Man_ and _Iron Man 2_  
 **Notes:** I am endlessly grateful to [](http://forochel.livejournal.com/profile)[**forochel**](http://forochel.livejournal.com/) for reading through this as I wrote it and working through plot and ideas with me, to [](http://illuvium.livejournal.com/profile)[**illuvium**](http://illuvium.livejournal.com/) for the cheerleading and troubleshooting, to [](http://yay-box.livejournal.com/profile)[**yay_box**](http://yay-box.livejournal.com/) for reading early chunks of this and being thoroughly encouraging.

There is a mix for the fic [here](http://bysine.livejournal.com/26659.html#cutid1), if you like, and longer notes [here](http://bysine.livejournal.com/26659.html#cutid2).

  
"Seriously, could you be any more ridiculous?"

Eduardo has come in through the hole in Mark's roof again. Which is infuriating, because it had been a very convenient hole and not at all a problem security-wise, according to JARVIS's calculations.

Calculations that had been made before Spiderman started appearing in Palo Alto.

"' _I am Iron Man_ '?" says Eduardo. "What the hell was that?"

"That was the truth," Mark replies. "I saw no reason to lie, so I told the truth."

Eduardo sighs. "Couldn't you have settled for, I don't know, an open secret?"

"If it's an open secret that defeats the purpose of it being a secret," Mark says simply. It's perfectly logical. Eduardo just keeps getting hung up on things like middle grounds. "Where's your mask? You're not wearing your mask."

"You know who I am, what's the point?" Eduardo snaps. "You sent me a Facebook message saying 'Wardo are you Spiderman' and didn't even bother to pick up the phone the fifty times I tried to call you back."

"Thirty-nine," Mark says, and when Wardo glares at him he asks, "What are you doing here?"

"Two things," says Eduardo. "First – how did you know I was Spiderman?"

"I had a hunch."

"A _hunch_ ," Eduardo repeats, incredulous.

"A hunch that I acted on by writing a programme that kept track of your Facebook posts and reported Spiderman sightings, from which I observed a discernible correlation between your absences and Spiderman's appearances," says Mark. "It was easy."

"It was easy-" Eduardo starts to say, but he stops and breathes instead. "God, you're such a –" He pauses again, rubs a hand over his face. "Okay. The next thing. Tell me this isn't about Spiderman."

"What are you talking about?"

"Fucking, _this_. All of this." He gestures jerkily to the workshop behind Mark, where the newest suit is in the midst of being rendered, the Mark II and III armour standing in their display cases by the wall.

Mark scoffs, because Wardo is– just. "You're asking me if Iron Man is about _you_?"

"Yes, I am asking you if you did this because of some crazy attempt to-"

"Tell me," says Mark, jerkily pulling down the zip of his fleece and undoing the top four buttons of his shirt to expose the blue glow of the arc reactor that is keeping him alive.

"Tell me this is about you."

And Mark doesn't have to say anything like _I almost died out there_ , because just the sight of it is enough to make Eduardo flinch, to see the guilt and horror cross his face.

If Mark were a better man, he wouldn't have gone about things this way. But Mark is not. Mark hadn't even remembered he had a heart until he had almost lost it.

And in the category of things Mark _has_ lost-

"I'm sorry," says Eduardo, even though none of this is his fault. His eyes dart from the arc reactor to Mark's face, searching for some clue in Mark's expression.

Mark looks steadily back at Eduardo, and remembers being in that cave in Afghanistan, being strapped into that crudely-made prototype armour. Being half blind and suffocating from the smell of it; ferrous and overwhelming, blood and sweat and sulphur.

He remembers thinking in that moment, amidst the panic and the adrenaline, _I want to go home_. And a second thought – quieter; tamped down but no less urgent: _Wardo_.

"This has nothing to do with you," Mark tells Eduardo. "Iron Man has nothing to do with you, or Facebook, or Spiderman."

What Mark means is that there is nothing he needs to apologise for, but Eduardo looks stung anyway.

There is a diametric quality about this situation that Mark can appreciate. Eduardo is no longer the guy who stood in the Kirkland dorm room holding a cease and desist letter in one hand and saying, _if there's ever anything wrong, you can tell me_. Eduardo saves people and fights crime in New York and _is not_ Mark's – not his CFO, and certainly not his best friend.

And now there is everything wrong with Mark, and instead of getting Eduardo he gets a suit of armour.

"Fine," says Eduardo. His mouth has become a hard line, and it's all too easy when he's in that costume to see how his shoulders tense.

He pulls his mask on, and in an instant Mark sees him change from Eduardo to Spiderman – from rumpled and hurt to hero. Because that's what Wardo is, whatever the newspapers might be saying. Iron Man may be an unknown quantity – Mark tries, of course, to do the right thing; tries harder than he's ever tried in his life – but nobody should ever doubt that Spiderman just wants to save the day.

"If there's ever anything you need, Iron Man, I'm the guy that wants to help."

Mark's throat is suddenly dry. "And what if you're not in the neighbourhood?"

It's impossible to tell, but Eduardo just might be smiling underneath his mask.

"You know how to find me."

 

 

"' _I have successfully privatized world peace?_ '" Eduardo asks incredulously. Or rather, Spiderman does, when he swings by the Facebook office the evening before a shareholders' meeting.

"Chris came up with that," says Mark. "It was catchy. I left it in."

Mark had called Chris the day after he had broken the sound barrier somewhere over Afghanistan and fallen afoul of a large number of military airspace protocols. "I need you to help me be Iron Man," was the first thing Mark had said. ("Is this a joke?" had been Chris' response, up until the point when Mark invited him over for a demonstration of the Mark III's capabilities.) So Chris pulls strings with people Mark didn't know he could pull strings with, including people at the Pentagon, and in exchange Mark says most of the things Chris suggests that he says.

Eduardo shrugs. "Suit yourself. I think it's a terrible mixture of cocky and naïve." He pauses. "Then again, so are you."

He's not removed his mask. Outside, Mark's secretary's intern appears to be having a minor freak-out that Mr. Zuckerberg is talking to _Spiderman_.

It doesn't make sense. The woman already works for Iron Man, surely that is enough.

"You could have just come in through the front door," Mark tells Eduardo. "You're a shareholder here. Someone should have already made you a security tag."

"Can they make one that says 'Spiderman'? Your windows are tricky to open from the other side."

"You're not supposed to be able to open my windows at all," Mark points out.

"I have my ways," says Eduardo. He wanders around the office, picking things up and looking at them – the framed cover of the TIME magazine triple feature on renewable energy, Iron Man and the future of social networking (' _Mark's Arc: One more way the founder of Facebook has changed the world_ '); the medal of commendation presented to Iron Man for preventing the Crimson Dynamo from wreaking havoc during the Chinese Premier's visit to the White House. A group photograph from the party they had thrown at Facebook when they had hit the six hundred million mark.

"Don't you have the whole of New York to take care of?" Mark asks.

"I was informed that this was a particularly important meeting," Eduardo replies.

Mark doesn't know why Eduardo is here; Eduardo never comes for the shareholders' meetings. But Mark doesn't ask, and Eduardo doesn't explain. He also doesn't explain why he's come over as Spiderman.

On some level it makes perfect sense – Eduardo never visits the Facebook office, but Spiderman can. Eduardo and Mark aren't really on speaking terms, but Spiderman and Iron Man are free to engage. He can imagine Eduardo working with that, setting down those boundaries in his mind, as if it makes a difference.

Yet perhaps it does make a difference, because the reality is that Eduardo is standing in his office, and they are having a conversation approaching banter.

Mark's phone rings. It's Chris.

"Mark, Audrey tells me that Spiderman is in your office right now. Is this true?"

"Yes," says Mark. "Could you please also inform the staff to stop spying on my visitors?"

"She's your secretary, she's supposed to keep track," says Chris. He sounds harried, like he's given up on taking the lift and is actually _sprinting up flights of stairs_. "This is an excellent photo opportunity. You need to tell me about these things."

"No, this is not in any way an excellent photo opportunity and I am not obliged to tell you anything," Mark replies. "Spiderman has no intention of being photographed-" he glances up at Eduardo as he says this and experiences something like satisfaction when Eduardo shakes his head- "and neither have I."

"Mark, listen-"

"He's leaving. Through the window. You should probably give up and take the lift."

Together they wrestle open one of the windows so that it is wide enough for Eduardo to swing out.

"That was hard," says Mark, "maybe we should get you a security pass."

Eduardo's got one hand pressed to the glass, the other braced against the frame of the window; he's perfectly balanced and entirely comfortable, every inch the masked superhero as captured in the papers or from countless Youtube videos.

"You get to work on that," says Eduardo. "And maybe I'll come hang around."

 

 

The question Mark gets the most when he's at the gala dinners and fundraising parties he is somehow still obliged to attend is, "So do you have Facebook inside your Iron Man suit?"

What Mark used to do had been to say 'yes' or 'no' and then walk away, but he has since been instructed against that, as part of Chris' efforts to make him seem less abrasive. (Why Chris even bothers is a mystery to Mark.)

These days he tends to reply with some sort of quip like, "Yes, that's why we developed Timeline," or, "No, it's a bit difficult to navigate if I'm looking at photographs of my neighbour's dog," depending on who is doing the asking and how irritable he feels.

He's repeating some version of this to one of the Instagram founders at a cocktail reception when he catches sight of Eduardo some way across the room.

Eduardo, in a suit just like the ones he used to wear back when – back _then_. He used to leave his shirt collars open all the time, Mark remembers. But this evening he's wearing a tie, and Mark knows if he just pulls at the knot and unbuttons the collar he will see the familiar red-and-blue fabric underneath; Wardo's second skin.

He is chatting animatedly with a couple of people that Mark doesn't recognise, but glances up the instant Mark looks at him.

Spider-sense. Right.

Mark is dimly aware of someone saying something to him, but it is as if the room has somehow shrunk to contain just him and Eduardo in that moment. There is something in the way Eduardo looks at Mark. It feels like hope, but it's gone the second Mark catches sight of it, replaced with something more resigned, a shuttering-off of emotion.

Eduardo turns away as abruptly as he had looked up, and Mark is left with a dull ache in his chest. Concealed beneath his own shirt and tie, the core of palladium continues to glow steadily.

Which of the two, he wonders, is better proof that Mark Zuckerberg has a heart?

He has no time to contemplate this further because Dustin is shoving his way past people to get to Mark, the Mark V briefcase handcuffed to his wrist.

"Excuse me," says Mark absently. He turns away from the Instagram guy (Kenneth? Kevin? Either way he looks insulted. Mark can just acquire them later or something as damage control. Isn't that what they want?) and heads over to Dustin.

"What's wrong?"

"San Francisco. Someone's holding the Golden Gate bridge hostage," Dustin tells him. "I'll take your drink."

"Do you think the Four Seasons would mind if I smashed a hole through one of their ballroom windows?" asks Mark, exchanging his untouched wine for the briefcase.

"I think they'd get like, badass points for that, so no."

The Mark V suit is a thing of beauty, a quick-assembly version of the armour so compact and light that it can fold itself into a briefcase. Heads are already turning as he shrugs off his sports jacket and gives the case a brief kick at the same time, causing it to flower into a metallic array of parts.

_Keep watching_ , Mark thinks with not an unreasonable amount of pride, pushing his hands into the gloves that finally emerge. _It gets even better_.

There is a collective gasp as he jerks his arms wide and the Mark V just unfolds over him, cabling and casing overlaid with a lightweight alloy, all painted a distinctive hot rod red and gold. The flaps settle in rapid succession like scales over his body, and then the helmet comes up, cupping his ears and the back of his head, folding down to secure his jaw, and, with a final clank, sliding down over his face.

" _Flight systems ready_ ," says JARVIS, " _calibrating exit route_."

As expected, the most convenient way is through the window.

There is a roaring in his ears. Part of it is coming from the roomful of delighted Facebook shareholders and Silicon Valley hotshots cheering for Iron Man, but mostly it is the thrill of being in the suit, of being impenetrable and invincible. Of being Iron Man.

" _I believe this is the Mark V suit's first public debut, sir," JARVIS comments helpfully. "I hope they're getting your best angles_."

"You should probably all stand back," Mark announces, heading towards the windows. Chris is going to have kittens about this, but when has that ever stopped Mark.

The crowd shrinks away from the window, looking on in awe as Mark raises his right hand and fires a blast. The Four Seasons has good shatter-proofing; the panel of glass cracks and splinters but falls to the ground in mostly intact sheets.

Mark powers up his repulsors just enough for a hover, and turns mid-air to face his impromptu audience. He doesn't let himself scan the room to see if Eduardo is still there.

"Have a great evening," he says instead, to the sound of erupting cheers, before whipping round and flying out the window.

" _Sir, you are a rock star_ ," says JARVIS.

"I'm aware of it, JARVIS," Mark replies, but he can't help but grin under his mask. "I programme you to say that."

 

One would think that supervillains would eventually get tired of terrorising the Golden Gate Bridge, but this is clearly not the case. JARVIS relays Dustin's situation report while Mark is on his way there.

"It's Obadiah Stane, and he's got a new suit," Dustin says, "he's says he's gonna destroy the bridge and everyone on it if you don't give him the arc reactor design and the Iron Man schematics."

Mark grimaces. "Tell me something new."

"He also wants Facebook, but that’s slightly lower down on the list," adds Dustin.

" _I would advise you to be careful, sir_ ," JARVIS tells Mark, " _the images of Iron Monger's new suit suggest that he has upgraded his arsenal_."

"I'm always careful, JARVIS," says Mark.

" _Of course, sir_."

The Golden Gate Bridge is in view now, hundreds of motorists trapped on it while Obadiah Stane hovers at just above the South Tower in his Iron Monger suit. One of the support pylons has already been heavily damaged. Mark zips past the TV station helicopters hovering some distance off and flies directly towards him.

"Iron Man," says Stane. "Finally, I have your attention."

"If Stane International wants to stage a hostile takeover of Facebook there are lawyers for that," Mark tells him.

"Oh yes, because you're so good at suits."

He's not funny at all; Mark just wants to hit him. "So what is this? Another feeble attempt to demonstrate the limited capabilities of your patently inferior armour prototype?"

"You know what gets to me, kid?" says Stane. "You know what makes me mad? Let me tell you – it's not your success – I respect success."

He's monologuing. They all do it, even the rampaging alien dragons. Mark wonders how Wardo deals with it. The next time he comes by again, Mark should ask.

"-what gets me is that you're a computer programmer who got lucky, and who somehow got lucky again and made the most powerful weapon in the world off the back of _my company's_ developments."

"Let me assure you that none of it was luck," Mark replies coldly. "It was genius and it was hard work. Yes, I constructed the Mark I suit from Stane International munitions. But if you were anywhere near capable of developing something the _slightest bit_ close to Iron Man, you wouldn't be holding this bridge hostage just to get to the schematics."

"You're smart, kid, let me give you that," says Stane. "But if you think you've privatised world peace, you're wrong."

"Am I?"

" _Visual evaluation of Iron Monger suit is complete,_ " JARVIS says. " _Establishing course of action._ "

"Yes," Stane tells him. "Because I have the monopoly on _war_."

"I'm sorry but that doesn't even make sense," says Mark, launching into the air and aiming two small missiles at the neck and side of Iron Monger's breastplate.

They both hit their mark and go off with enough force to throw Iron Monger backwards in the sky, but when the smoke clears he is unharmed apart from a small sizzle of sparks.

"Nice try," says Stane. The machine guns affixed to each arm of his suit clank into position. "Now try _this_."

The sheer volume of bullets coming at him is enough to slam Mark backwards against the tower, sparks and metal bouncing off the surface of his suit. He manages to take out one of Stane's machine guns with a blast from his chest repulsor, throwing Stane off balance. It gives Mark just enough time to gain the altitude needed for him to rain successive blasts down at Stane, destroying his other machine gun. He has to get higher – to draw Stane away from the Bridge so that nobody below gets hurt.

Stane is clearly on to Mark's plan, because instead of pursuing Mark he directs the powerful laser beam from his chestplate towards the suspension cables on the Bridge.

Mark hears it before he sees it; the wires snapping and coming unlaid, the bridge groaning as the balance shifts. Five of the cables peel away, to the sound of mass panic from the people below.

"Are you going to keep shooting at me, or are you going to negotiate?" asks Stane.

"I don't think it counts as a negotiation if I'm just acquiescing to your demands," Mark replies.

"Very well," says Stane, slicing off another two cables.

Mark swoops in and barely manages to catch them; they whip him through the air, his armour juddering from the impact, but he regains his balance and pulls them up again in a valiant attempt to keep the deck of the bridge from tilting any further.

"You can't catch all of them, Iron Man," says Stane. "Don't even bother trying. Give me the Iron Man schematics and the design for your arc reactor."

"You want some Facebook shares thrown in with that as well?" asks Mark. The cables are killing him, and JARVIS is intoning something dire about the energy levels of the suit. The Mark V is a light model; it's not meant for this sort of strain.

"Come on, kid," says Stane, his voice smooth and cajoling. It's probably the voice that has secured him billions of dollars of munitions deals; genial, persuasive, confident he can seal the deal. "Think about it. We could make great partners. I bring the ammo, you bring the smarts. Guys like you and me, we can talk. Be friends."

" _Power at nineteen per cent, sir,_ " JARVIS tells him.

"If there is one thing you should know about me, it's this," says Mark. "My best friend sued me for six hundred million dollars. I think there's a lot you can infer from that."

And before Stane can reply, Mark musters up all the remaining power from his suit and fires a single blast of pure energy aimed straight at Stane's head. The impact is enough to knock Stane out of the air and send him plummeting into the water.

" _Power at zero per cent, sir-_ "

Mark's heads-up display is the first to go, before JARVIS's voice fades away abruptly.

Then the repulsors switch off.

Mark falls, his grip on the cables loosening as he plunges quickly downwards. He shuts his eyes. Emergency backup power in five, four, three–

Something slams against him, an arm coming round his waist to grab hold of him and pull him up away from the water. Mark opens his eyes. He's… flying. Through the air.

"So," says Eduardo, shooting out a string of web from his other hand and swinging them towards South Tower. "I was in the neighbourhood."

"You were in the neighbourhood," Mark repeats.

"I had to steal Dustin's Ducati to get to said neighbourhood, but-"

"Semantics," says Mark.

"Semantics," Eduardo agrees.

" _We are now running on emergency backup power,_ " says JARVIS.

The heads-up display flickers back on.

"I'm good to go," Mark tells Eduardo. "The bridge-"

Eduardo nods. "That's what I'm here for."

They can't start fixing the bridge just yet, however. With a great roar, Obadiah Stane emerges from the water, guns blazing down on them.

"I'll get the bridge, you get Stane," Eduardo shouts, darting along the cables and shooting out long strings of webbing to replace the vertical cables that had been severed.

With the suit running at base levels of power, there is nothing much Mark can do apart from fly towards Stane in an attempt to draw fire away from Eduardo.

" _I distinctly remember you saying that you were going to be careful, sir,_ " JARVIS says reproachfully.

"Any better ideas, JARVIS?" Mark asks, before barrelling headlong into Stane.

They wrestle in mid-air, careening this way and that as Stane attempts to pry Mark off him. Mark's targets are more specific, however, as he reaches round to the back of Stane's armour and yanks out a good handful of exposed cables just under the helmet.

Stane bellows in rage, finally throwing Mark off, but the damage has been done.

" _You appear to have successfully taken out the optic cables of Iron Monger's suit, sir,_ " says JARVIS, as Stane is forced to open his visor.

"You'll pay for this, Iron Man," Stane snarls, aiming what looks like a flamethrower unit at Mark.

"It'll be my treat," Mark replies. To JARVIS, he says, "Flares."

His shoulder flaps open to send out a rain of sparks directly in Stane's vision.

Blinded by the light, Stane plummets downwards again, but before he can regain his balance Eduardo is there, catching him in strings of webbing that wrap round and encase him. Mark flies in to remove the headpiece entirely and disable the Iron Monger suit.

They leave Stane hanging from North Tower for collection by the police, who are finally able to direct motorists off the bridge to safety.

"That was fun," says Eduardo. "Nice suit, by the way."

"I know," Mark replies. "Thanks for swinging by."

"I'm here for you," Eduardo tells him, still casual, still off-hand, but it makes Mark's heart swell a little all the same.

"Also," Eduardo adds, "I crashed Dustin's bike. How mad do you think he'll be?"

Mark shrugs, the suit making a whirring noise as he does so. "Very," he says. "But that thing was an over-pimped monstrosity."

"I don't think either of us has the right to call anything over-pimped," says Eduardo reasonably.

"Valid point," Mark concedes. He looks at Eduardo, standing there in his Spiderman suit that is just a little bit singed in spots from barely avoiding Stane's heavy fire. It's better like this. It's always been better like this. They make a good team.

He doesn't say any of that to Eduardo. "I assume you need a lift," he says instead.

 

  


[](http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/1764/fullu.png)

  


_(Click thumbnail to enlarge)_  
Read as separate pages: [[Page 1]](http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/2426/54429366.png) [[Page 2]](http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/6218/46528591.png) or [[Text-only version]](http://bysine.livejournal.com/27052.html#cutid1)  


"I could kiss you," says Chris.

"Please don't," Mark replies. "That would be terrifying. We have boundaries and I would appreciate it if you stuck to them."

"Okay, but seriously, this is _great_." Chris scrolls through news coverage from the past twenty-four hours that JARVIS has helpfully projected onto a nearby screen.

"I don't see how this is good, let alone great. The Four Seasons is pressing charges for property damage and I've been subpoenaed. Again."

People are always suing Mark for things. Or forcing him to go to Washington so politicians like Senator Stern can harangue him about his intellectual arrogance and unwillingness to contribute to the American good. That had been insulting, not to mention a tremendous waste of Mark's time.

"This is better than a photo op, this is a _publicity coup_." Chris jabs a finger at Gawker's montage of shaky phone camera recordings of the fight. "You look like a team player, that's what's important."

"More important than-" Mark pauses to read from the CNN ticker – "the 'growing disquiet over the potential rise in copycat suits'?"

Chris sighs. "Mark, there will always be growing disquiet over copycat suits, and as long as you keep being yourself the property damage charges will keep coming – and don't think I'm not mad about that, by the way-"

"I was hoping you had forgotten about that."

"-honestly, can't you just _use the door_?" Chris shakes his head. "Anyway. Forget that. I'll deal with your official statement. Are you working from home today?"

Mark gestures pointedly at his dressing gown and pyjamas.

"Right," says Chris, "sometimes it's hard to tell. It's probably a good thing you're not going to the office, Dustin's on the warpath because someone stole his Ducati."

"That's terrible," Mark replies, giving Chris the blankest of looks.

Chris squints at him. "I feel like there's something I should know about."

"Nothing." Mark shrugs. "I wasn't even there. I was staging a publicity coup. "

"Oh, just go to your basement," says Chris, waving Mark away.

When Mark enters the workshop JARVIS is running a scan of the suit, searching for flaws in the interface that might have caused the delay with the backup power. Mark frowns over a few problem spots that have already been flagged up. Those he can patch fairly quickly, but he may have to look into reworking the circuitry if they can't find anything else.

Audrey, his secretary, has sent him a digest of the morning's mail; he disregards all the ones that are of a congratulatory nature and focuses on the department updates. He's glanced through a few of the system reports and filed away a memo from the most recent developers' brainstorm for later perusal when he catches sight of a new message in his inbox.

**From:** Sean Parker [s.parker@facebook.com]  
 **To:** Mark Zuckerberg [zuck@facebook.com]  
 **Subj:** Nicely done

_You really owned it last night, man! Saw it on the news this morning. In Ibiza and things have been WILD you'd love it here okay no you wouldn't._

_Just letting you know that I'm going to be offline for a while. If you want to contact me, JARVIS will know how. Hope he's been helpful, heard you pimped him up and all that._

_Sean_

Mark stares at the email for a while. It's not unusual for Sean to go underground for periods of time – these days he's become more paranoid than before, and every time Mark hears from him he's jetted off to a different location in a vain attempt to shake off whoever he thinks is following him.

That, and well, there's also the underage girls.

" _I don't appreciate being described as 'pimped up', sir_ ," JARVIS says.

"That's just Sean," Mark replies absently, scanning over the lines of Sean's message again.

" _Customised and heavily upgraded, perhaps_ ," JARVIS continues, in what appears to be the AI equivalent of a sulk, " _but not 'pimped'_."

JARVIS had originally been developed by one of Sean's investment projects, a London-based start-up that designed artificial intelligence systems. The UK government had quietly tanked the company and seized the technology, but not before Sean had passed on its key prototype to Mark as a peace offering after a particularly publicised bender.

Mark has made modifications, of course. Significant modifications. He's still not sure how he'd managed to give JARVIS a personality, though.

"Do you know where he is, JARVIS?"

" _Mr. Parker appears to still be in Ibiza_ ," says JARVIS. " _Would you like me to initiate contact?_ "

"No, that won't be necessary," Mark says. "But keep an eye on him."

JARVIS sounds almost sullen. " _Of course, sir_."

Mark turns to the task of patching the Iron Man system. "JARVIS, I'm wiring in."

" _Duly noted. You won't be disturbed. Shall I put on some music?_ "

"That would be ideal," Mark replies, surveying the code that he's pulled up onto the displays. "While I'm wired in, do a functionality analysis of the suit based on the damage sustained last night."

After a pause, he adds, "And look into some possibilities for high-performance fabric composites. Something extremely flexible, but I need it to also be sturdy. Definitely bullet- and fire-proof. If it doesn't exist I want options."

" _Anything for you, sir. Do you have any preferences as to the colour, at this point?_ "

Mark clears his throat. "Red," he says. "Red and blue."

 

It turns out that there's a far more efficient way to rig the backup system for the suit, but after Mark does that he finds that he has to go over a couple of bugs in the code to make sure the power reserves aren't triggered by accident. By the time he's done, it is pitch dark outside, and there are at least fifteen messages in his phone from Dustin, Chris and Audrey asking if he's remembered to eat. (Audrey's question, specifically, is whether Mark's remembered that he had a lunch appointment with Peter Thiel, but it's the thought that counts.)

There is half a Panini sandwich in the fridge that Mark hopes is from two days ago and not the previous week. He tosses it in the microwave and opens a can of Red Bull while he waits, thinking the whole time about how he might keep the Mark V functioning optimally under heavy fire. Last night had been fine, but Stane's tech is shit.

" _Sir, there was a delivery for you,_ " says JARVIS. " _Mr. Hughes signed for it earlier today_."

"He didn't bring it in?"

" _It's rather large, sir, and was moved to the garage_."

When Mark gets to his garage, he finds a red Ducati standing between his Acura and the accidental scrap-pile from the Mark V trial-and-error phase.

The Ducati definitely explains Chris' last two text messages ( _I didn't mean BUY him another one_ and _Mark is there something you need to talk about_ ). It comes with a sealed envelope – inside are the keys, and a note.

_Thought D might appreciate another over-pimped monstrosity_ , it says.

And written below that, in a slightly more hurried scrawl: _Thanks for the lift_.

 

 

Mark doesn't have time to figure out a way to thank Eduardo for Dustin's replacement bike, because the next morning he's whisked off to Washington for the second hearing on the status of the Iron Man suit.

Marilyn Delpy is waiting on the tarmac when the private jet lands; he's not sure when exactly Chris had roped her into Legal but Mark has no complaints.

"Good to see you, Mark," says Marilyn. "You're due in fifteen minutes."

"Not going to ask me to settle again?

Marilyn smiles. Her eyes are warm. "I think the circumstances are vastly different."

"They still want something I made," Mark replies, "I think the circumstances are comparable."

"Perhaps," says Marilyn. "I would ask you to behave, but I forgot to the last time, and look how well that turned out."

The last hearing had been a fiasco. The positive thing was that Mark had come out of it fairly unscathed, despite the fact that Mark had essentially been, well, _Mark_. He had not bothered to conceal his extreme boredom during the proceedings and talked in circles round all of Senator Stern's questions, infuriating the man and delighting the press. He had then proceeded to make intermittent glottal noises at the back of his throat all throughout the video footage presentation of military flight-suit tests in Pyongyang and Iran.

Then, when his patience had begun to run low, he'd hacked the screens and had JARVIS bring up footage of the tests _failing_. Which had sent the press into a frenzy and given him the perfect opportunity to stand up and say resolutely and calmly into the nearest camera, "I have successfully privatised world peace. I think I deserve some credit for that."

And then an alien dragon had taken it upon itself to attack Brooklyn Bridge, which had resulted in the hearing being abruptly adjourned in order for Iron Man to go save the day.

So Mark hadn't behaved particularly well, but this is _his suit_ they had been talking about. Mark doesn't do well with incompetents, especially if they've got all their priorities wrong. These are the people who have got the New York Police Department permanently on the lookout for Spiderman because they've put him on the orange list. Whatever that's supposed to mean.

There is evidently a limit to Chris' string-pulling abilities, because they're back at the hearing again, and Senator Stern is still trying to take Mark's suit.

"I thought we'd settled this the last time around, Senator," says Mark.

"The last time around, you called me an idiot, Mr. Zuckerberg," Senator Stern replies.

"I didn't call you an idiot," Mark tells him, "I called you an incompetent fool. There's a difference, you should look it up."

Out of the corner of his eye, Mark can see Chris trying very hard not to bury his face in his hands.

"Let's just cut to the chase, shall we," says Stern. "In light of the incident involving the Golden Gate Bridge two days ago, we find ourselves faced with an uncomfortable reality, Mr. Zuckerberg – that yours is not the only suit out there."

"Obadiah Stane's suit was in no way _close_ -" Mark begins.

" _Mr. Zuckerberg_ , if you would be so kind as to let me finish-"

"This is, and always has been a waste of my time," Mark tells him coldly. "You've seen the footage. Stane's suit was a vastly inferior attempt at imitating mine, and it wasn't good enough. There is nothing to discuss."

"I'd like to call upon our expert witness, Mr. Justin Hammer." Stern smiles. It's a politician's smile, charming and jarringly false all at once. "Mr. Hammer is one of our primary defence contractors, I'd say he knows a thing or two about these things, wouldn't you, Mr. Zuckerberg?"

"So does Obadiah Stane, why don't you call him in as well?" Mark replies. "Oh, right, he can't make it today because he's in custody."

"You're an asshole, Zuckerberg," says Stern venomously, and even then he's still wearing some version of that ingratiating smile, twisted with anger.

"Well," says Mark, leaning back in his chair. "Tell me something new."

Justin Hammer is a baffling combination of slick and weedy, with a penchant for expansive gestures and over-the-top rhetoric. There is something about Hammer when he walks into a room that just _falls short_ – a feeling like he should have more of a presence, like he shouldn't be so easy to overlook given the fact that he seems to be trying so hard to be seen. He's never been a figure like Obadiah Stane was, but not for lack of trying.

Also, Hammer Industries' IT systems are a joke. Mark's hacked them a couple of times out of boredom and for all of Hammer's blustering about 'Securing America', their firewalls are laughably easy to get past.

"Mark, my friend, haven't seen you in a while," Hammer says when he comes in, walking round in an attempt at some sort of handshake or manly fistbump.

Mark just stares at him blankly.

"He doesn't…" says Marilyn, making an abortive gesture.

"Good to see you," Hammer says quickly, quirking his eyebrows and making finger-guns at Mark before whirling around to face Senator Stern.

"I've not even met him-" Mark hisses at Marilyn, who mouths I know and shrugs.

"-what I am saying is that I know all of us are acting in the best interests of our great country," Hammer begins, sweeping up one of the tabletop microphones as he paces across the front of the room. "Mark Zuckerberg with his amazing suit, and myself – through our developments at Hammer Industries-"

"Mr. Hammer, why don't you tell us what you think about the Iron Monger suit we saw two days ago," Senator Stern interrupts.

"Oh yes," says Hammer. "Screens, please." He snaps his fingers twice. After a five-second lag, aerial images of Stane's Iron Monger suit appear on the screens.

"We're concerned with two things here," Hammer explains, "how the suit is powered, and the flight systems. Because the question is, how does that compare with the Iron Man suit? Now, if you look at this enlarged photograph here-"

"Mark," Marilyn whispers urgently, "what are you doing?"

After the first hearing, they've apparently attempted to secure the network by adding extra encryption. Mark works through it in the amount of time it takes for Hammer to enlarge and highlight his blurry images. In a matter of seconds he has one of JARVIS's scans of the Iron Monger suit projected onto the screens in place of Hammer's presentation.

"Whoa, there," says Hammer, waving his hands affably. He's laughing like it's a joke, like this is supposed to happen, but there's something dark in his expression when he turns to Mark; the barest flash of rage. "Mark, buddy, that's great… right, helping a guy out, huh?"

"Right there on the back of the Iron Monger suit is the battery that ran it," Mark says, rotating the image on the screen using his smartphone. "It's the size of a suitcase and weighs close to eighty pounds. Half of the energy it produces is expended on achieving sufficient lift."

He brings up JARVIS' rough simulation of the suit's flight pattern. "The strain of flying the suit and executing complex manoeuvres with the inadequate support provided would undoubtedly result in dozens of minor fractures and a high risk of trauma to the spine."

Senator Stern is rising to his feet, red in the face. "Zuckerberg, if you don't take down those images right now-"

"Ask Obadiah Stane if he's having a hell of a backache," Mark snaps. "I believe we're done here."

" _This hearing has not been adjourned!_ " Stern says sharply as Mark stands to go.

Before Mark can leave, however, the building is rocked by a deafening explosion.

"JARVIS, can you see what's happening outside the building?" Mark asks, while everyone else in the room attempts to duck for cover. Chris is already unclasping the black cover that was disguising the Mark V briefcase.

" _Certainly, sir,_ " says JARVIS, who brings up a satellite feed of Capitol Building. " _There appear to be two unidentified hostiles outside the premises. The explosion has damaged parts of the rotunda._ "

"Give me your phone," Chris tells Mark. "It's time to suit up. And Mark?"

"Yes?"

"Please use the door."

 

 

The two hostiles that JARVIS identified don't appear to have very much more of a plan beyond setting off the explosion and luring Mark out, because their attacks are virtually useless against the suit. One of them keeps flinging discus-shaped blades at Mark, which do nothing apart from leave scratches on the paintwork. The other attempts to fire various explosive quills at Mark while declaiming that he is the Porcupine

It is almost too easy; Mark effectively grounds the one with the discuses by taking out his jetpack, and the Porcupine ends up incapacitating himself when Mark sends a repulsor blast straight towards the concussion bomb he sets off.

"Why do you even bother?" Mark asks wearily as the sounds of police sirens draw near. The Porcupine ignores him in favour of continuing to fuss over his ruined battle suit, while Discus just glowers, having been relieved of his knives.

" _Sir, there's a telephone call for you_ ," says JARVIS.

The caller id appears on Mark's heads-up display: _Eduardo Saverin_.

"Yes JARVIS, put him on," says Mark. "Hello?"

There is some sort of crashing sound in the background before Eduardo's voice comes through. "Mark? Are you there?"

"What's going on?"

"I'm in a bit of a situation right now and could use a bit of help-"

"I'll be right there," says Mark immediately.

 

He thinks, with some guilt, of a time when it had been Eduardo who would come running, who gave and gave and somehow never seemed to demand repayment in kind. Up until the lawsuit, that is. But even that had been about something else, about betrayal, perhaps, Mark thinks on hindsight.

Yet, possibly, Eduardo _had_ expected something, all that time. Something apart from Facebook and being Mark's CFO and making his father proud. When Mark looks back he tries to remember any points where there might have been some inarticulable request in the way Eduardo looked at him, something that Mark, with his paucity of feeling, with his thirst for recognition, had just never noticed. He can't be sure if those moments had existed, but what he knows is that if they had, he had let them slip by along with everything else.

Now Mark's the one who is crossing states to get to where Eduardo is. Only it's not Eduardo seeking Mark's help, but Spiderman turning to Iron Man. Mark has had no use for these distinctions but they are there all the same, conflated with all the notions of camaraderie and saving lives and being a good person.

It's only when he's flying over Staten Island that he realises that Eduardo had asked for Mark on the phone.

 

There is a swarm of giant mechanical bees attacking downtown Manhattan when Mark arrives. A few of them have already been taken out by Eduardo, dangling in webbing off the sides of buildings or smouldering on the streets. The rest are flying about blasting buildings at random. A particularly large one has landed on top of Woolworth Building.

Eduardo is alternating between snatching civilians out of harm's way and trying to divert fire from the bees, but it is clear that he is overwhelmed by the sheer number of them. Mark flies over to the nearest bee and punches it out before it can take aim at Eduardo.

"You look like you need a little help," says Mark, blasting another two bees, which Eduardo catches with his webbing before they fall and crush anything below.

"Took you long enough," Eduardo retorts. He darts down to sweep up a small child holding an ice cream cone and swings off to put the boy somewhere safe.

"JARVIS. Anything on these bees?" asks Mark, swinging round to cover Eduardo's six.

" _I have done a satellite scan of the area and there are approximately twenty-five bees still active, sir,_ " JARVIS informs him. " _They appear to be converging at your position._ "

The anti-tanks and grenade launchers had been excluded from the Mark V suit because there simply hadn't been space in the design. Mark sorely regrets this now. He blasts three of the bees in rapid succession with his chest repulsor, trusting that Eduardo will make sure they don't hurt anyone below, but it's not enough. The bees keep coming, and while Mark's suit can withstand their fire, the risk of Eduardo getting hit is increasing exponentially.

One of the blasts from the bees clips Mark in the shoulder; he's thrown backwards for a dizzying moment. When he regains his balance he sees Eduardo clinging to the side of the building, casting strings of web in quick succession at the nearest bee in order to impede its flight.

"Can you find some way to draw them away from the buildings?" Eduardo calls.

"I'll try," says Mark, but before he can do so, another figure appears on the roof of the adjacent building.

The person – a woman dressed in black – takes off at a dead run, sprints towards the edge of the roof and makes a flying leap towards the nearest bee.

"What on earth-" Eduardo begins.

She lands perfectly on one of them, gripping onto an antenna for balance before shooting the bee in the head. As the bee bucks and begins to tumble towards the ground, she springs off it and catches another by its leg, hoisting herself up onto its back with terrifying agility and taking the second bee out as well.

"Who's that?" asks Mark, blasting another bee with his repulsors.

"I don't know!" Eduardo shouts, catching all three falling bees in a hastily-produced net. "She's incredible!"

The woman takes out a third bee by somehow electrocuting it with something she fires from her wrists, but her leap towards the fourth is just a little short. She misses its wing by a fraction, and falls.

Mark's heading towards her in an instant, but even as she falls she manages to spin around midair so she can fire at the underside of the fourth bee, with little apparent regard for the fact that she is plummeting from a height of more than fifteen storeys.

Mark catches her just as the bee veers off course and starts to smoke, pulling her out of its erratic downward path.

"Thanks, but I had it handled," the woman says, twisting around to send another electric energy blast in the direction of another passing bee. She looks vaguely familiar, Mark thinks. "Grappling hooks."

Eduardo successfully traps that bee, suspending it off the side of a building. "Nice work," he calls, as he swings by, but when he catches sight of the woman's face he almost loses his grip on his web. " _Christy?_ "

"Oh, damn," says the woman – Christy – as she clambers up to kneel on Mark's shoulders and begins to fling a series of small metallic discs that embed themselves in the head of a nearest bee and cause it to short circuit.

" _CHRISTY?_ " Eduardo is doubling back towards them.

Christy – _oh_. Mark remembers. Appletinis.

"We don't have time for this!" she shouts at Eduardo, while still firing shots at the nearest bee. "One of you needs to get to that bee over there on Woolworth Building, I think it's controlling the rest of the hive."

" _Of course,_ " Mark breathes. He feels a short stab of irritation at not having thought of that.

"Christy, what the hell are you doing here-"

"Shut up and catch me!" Christy yells, launching herself from Mark's back and leaping gracefully towards Eduardo, who catches her more out of reflex than anything. "Mark, you get the queen bee!"

As Mark heads off towards Woolworth Building, he hears Christy telling Eduardo that he can freak out later and commanding him to "toss me now!"

The bees seem to sense that Mark is heading over to destroy their queen, because they immediately stop firing at buildings in favour of pursuing Mark. Christy and Eduardo are helping tremendously by methodically taking out the bees, but Mark still finds he has to weave back and forth frenetically in order to avoid getting hit.

The queen bee is more than twice the size of the other bees, Mark realises as he approaches. With a dull mechanical groan the queen rises from its perch. From its tremendous underside emerges a row of blaster cannons.

"Divert all power to chest RT," Mark tells JARVIS.

The queen bee fires just a split second after Mark does. It makes all the difference. The resulting explosion is huge enough to heavily damage the machine, and as it tumbles from the building, the other bees begin to drop abruptly.

While Eduardo is preoccupied with trying to catch as many of the bees as possible, Christy flings out a grappling hook, leaping off the bee she had been clinging onto and swinging towards a building.

Mark flies over to intercept her on the roof. "I'm impressed," he says, drawing up the visor of his helmet.

"You should be," Christy replies. She's just finished scaling the side of a building but she's not even out of breath. "Good work out there. Cleanup's going to be a bitch."

"You were in-"

"Harvard, yes. I was keeping an eye on Spiderman." Christy stows away her grappling line and dusts off her hands. "Someone had to. You should answer your phone calls, Iron Man. SHIELD has been trying to contact you."

"I screen them," says Mark shortly. "Your name isn't really Christy, is it?"

"Is that relevant?" asks Christy. When Mark just looks at her she says, "In the field I'm the Black Widow."

" _The Black Widow_?" says Eduardo, landing neatly behind them. "You've got to be kidding me."

"Listen, I have been doing this much longer than you have, so if anyone is biting anyone's style, it's you," Christy tells him.

"Did you know she was an undercover agent sent to keep tabs on you in Harvard?" Mark asks him.

"You were a _what_?" Eduardo explodes.

"What he said," Christy replies.

Mark nods. "Also her name might not be Christy."

"You were keeping tabs on me?" continues Eduardo in tones of wounded outrage. "You were supposed to be my girlfriend!" He spins helplessly in a frustrated half-circle. "And you set fire to my bed!"

"She set fire to your bed?" asks Mark, alarmed.

"You were yelling at me over the phone about freezing the account and she set fire to my bed and – that's not the point!" Eduardo waves his hands in Christy's direction. "You were a spy!"

"I was there to evaluate your powers and find out enough to make a preliminary report," says Christy. "Don't take it personally."

Mark turns to Eduardo. "You were Spiderman in _Harvard_ and you didn't mention it?"

"I got bitten in freshman year but I didn't – I wasn't Spiderman till… later," Eduardo replies. "And how exactly was I supposed to tell you? Speaking of which," he rounds on Christy. "How did you find out?"

"That's classified," Christy replies calmly.

"And the reason why you've suddenly appeared," says Mark, jerking his head to one side. "Is that also classified?"

"Like I said, SHIELD has been trying to contact you. I'm here to speak with you personally because you haven't returned any of our calls," Christy tells him. "I left thirty-seven messages with your secretary."

Eduardo snorts. "I see nothing's changed."

"And then I figured I'd give you a hand before you both got blasted into oblivion by those bees," Christy says, pointedly ignoring Eduardo.

"We were taking care of it," says Mark.

"Didn't look like it," Christy counters.

"Do you have a file on me as well?"

"Classified."

Mark nods. "I thought so." He makes a mental note to look into hacking the SHIELD database when he gets back. "What's the message?"

"We need to debrief you on the circumstances following your announcement," says Christy. "Don't pretend to look blank, you know which announcement."

"I'm just going to interrupt here for one second." Eduardo holds up a finger. "What's SHIELD?"

"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division," says Mark. When Christy glances at him he shrugs. "I screen the calls. It doesn't mean I don't look into them."

"And what is it that you do, again?" asks Eduardo.

"In the loosest of senses, we deal with superhuman threats," Christy replies. "Part of that extends to handling individuals such as yourselves."

"And you want to debrief me," says Mark.

"I'd like you to come in and speak with our director, yes."

"I'm a little busy right now, you'll have to make an appointment with my secretary."

"I'd rather make an appointment with you," says Christy. "Don't make me have to chase you around, Mark Zuckerberg."

"You don't want her chasing you around, trust me," Eduardo tells him.

"Fine," says Mark. "But you're helping with cleanup."

Christy rolls her eyes. "What do you think SHIELD agents have been doing for the past ten minutes?"

Mark looks down. People in hazmat suits have arrived with cranes and trucks and are beginning the tedious process of cutting down the smouldering bees that Eduardo had left slung up above the streets.

"Take a break, boys," Christy says. She makes a face. "Not that you've earned it or anything."

 

 

There's probably a joke somewhere that starts like this: Iron Man and Spiderman walk into a donut shop.

Mark's not sure how the rest of it goes. In reality they buy some donuts and head outside again, but that's not very funny.

"This is good stuff," says Eduardo, taking a bite from a jelly donut. He has to pull up his mask halfway in order to do so; it's vaguely ridiculous.

They're sitting inside the hole of the giant donut sign on top of Randy's Donuts in California. This wasn't what Mark had envisioned when Eduardo-as-Spiderman had said to the lady at the counter, "We're eating in."

"So," says Eduardo. "Christy. Did you see that coming?"

"No," says Mark, neglecting to mention that this is mostly because he'd forgotten that Eduardo even had a girlfriend named Christy.

"Yeah, it's just – I can't believe it, you know?" Eduardo says. "She said, 'Facebook me' and it all followed from there but she seemed – well she didn't turn out to be _normal_ by any stretch but I didn't think she'd be some sort of-"

"Secret agent super assassin?" Mark supplies. "Well, neither did I."

"She did do mixed martial arts and have a black belt in Krav Maga," says Eduardo. "And she could speak five languages fluently, but this was-"

"Harvard, I know," says Mark. "Five languages was pretty normal."

"One of them was Latin." Eduardo pauses. "Do you think I should have picked up on that? Who even speaks Latin?"

"No one speaks Latin," Mark tells him. "It's a dead language. That's ridiculous."

"Well, apparently Christy does," says Eduardo, shaking his head. "I'm going to have another donut."

This is probably the first time they've talked about Harvard, Mark realises. It is definitely the first time they've had anything resembling a meal together. Not that they used to eat together on anything like a regular basis back then, Mark's diet being primarily made up of beer, red vines and cold pizza.

"You didn't tell me you had been bitten," says Mark before he can stop himself.

It comes out like an accusation.

Eduardo sounds weary when he replies. "Like I said, it wasn't as if I could just slip it in during casual conversation."

"You could have tried-"

"And even if I had, you probably wouldn't have paid attention."

Mark bristles. "I think I would have paid attention if my best friend was telling me he had a _genetic mutation_ -"

"Best friend? You're sure you want to go there?" says Eduardo, voice sharp.

It's like a slap. Mark cannot see Eduardo's face but he can imagine exactly the expression Eduardo must be wearing. Nobody in Mark's life does anger and hurt like Eduardo Saverin can.

"Maybe we should talk about Christy," Mark says obliquely.

"I didn't tell you because I didn't know how to bring it up, and I thought it would go away," Eduardo tells Mark. His voice is ragged, like the words are being torn from him. "But it didn't go away, and by the time I thought to come to you, there was Facebook."

"You should have told me-"

"I told you that I quit my internship on the first day and you didn't even remember _that_ ," says Eduardo. "And let me tell you why I quit. I quit because I couldn't handle an internship on top of looking for advertisers for Facebook and preventing muggings and robberies all over the city."

"Wardo-"

" _I didn't sleep_ , Mark. I was being chased by the police, day and night, while trying to be your CFO. That's what I was doing in New York."

In the wake of that statement, Mark finds himself unable to do anything but stare at Eduardo, because there's nothing he can say in response.

Correction – there's everything he can say in response, starting with _I'm sorry_ and extending to all the things Mark now knows he should have done and said, back then. But Mark cannot fathom Eduardo's response; shudders to think about the million ways he could mess it up and drive Eduardo further away.

And he can't have that, especially not after the giant bees and the Golden Gate Bridge and the random dropping in at Mark's place or the Facebook offices. Mark refuses to accept that some things just break. Mark has fixed his own heart and he has to believe that he can fix this.

So he falls back on the obvious excuse. "I didn't know."

Eduardo pulls up his mask to take another bite of donut. "Now you do." He sounds bitter.

They sit there in silence for close to a minute, Eduardo seemingly determined to eat his way through his half of the donuts. Mark stares out at the evening sky, painfully aware of Eduardo's every movement, and wonders how the easy back-and-forth they'd had just less than an hour ago has now completely vanished.

Another minute passes, and Mark decides he cannot bear it any longer.

He says the first thing that comes to mind.

"Aren't you going to thank me?"

"I'm sorry but, _what?_ "

"Yes." Mark forges on bravely. "I- I saved your ass back there; you should probably thank me for that."

Eduardo just gapes at him.

"You called," says Mark, feeling increasingly like he's treading water here and failing. "I left a serious situation at Capitol Building to come to your rescue. The Rotunda will never be the same again. Chris is undoubtedly having some sort of meltdown as we speak."

Eduardo shakes his head and looks away, but Mark would bet – Mark would bet all his shares in Facebook that Eduardo is smiling under his mask.

"Thanks," says Eduardo after a moment. He sounds like he doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry. "You saved my ass back there."

Mark doesn't reply, just smiles down at his donut and tries to ignore the way his heart is pounding in his chest.  
  



	2. Chapter 2

  
[](http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/4381/gawker1.png) [](http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/8315/bbcm.png)  
_(Click thumbnail to enlarge)_  
[[Text-only version]](http://bysine.livejournal.com/27052.html#cutid2) [[Text-only version]](http://bysine.livejournal.com/27052.html#cutid3)  


 

"Lie low," Chris tells him, and for once Mark is inclined to agree. He lets Corporate deal with the ensuing dip in Facebook share prices after the incidents, and lets Chris handle his official statements to the press. He doesn't respond to the dozens of calls and messages that Audrey dutifully forwards to him, only breaking the silence to return a few developers' reports with his own annotations.

Mark has a puzzle to solve.

Shortly after he'd returned to Palo Alto, a large package had arrived, hand-delivered by a dour-faced SHIELD agent who had called it "a souvenir from Agent Lee". Inside the box had been one of the bees that had fallen when Mark had taken out the queen bee, largely undamaged and still tangled up in some of Eduardo's webbing.

He spends the next two days in his workshop. Dustin, tasked with keeping an eye on Mark, is easy enough to distract – the replacement Ducati immediately sends him into paroxysms of delight. While Dustin hurtles down the streets of Palo Alto on his new bike or hangs around Mark's kitchen being a massive troll on the 'We can't depend on Iron Man' forums, Mark takes the bee apart.

He has JARVIS run a background check on Discus and the Porcupine, and hacks into the mainframes of a number of major weapons developers to start running comparison tests matching their designs with the hardware he's got from the mechanical bee.

"How can you be sure they're all linked?" asks Dustin, when Mark ropes him in to help with tracing the IP addresses of all the main users on the 'We can't depend on Iron Man' forum.

"I'm not," says Mark, "but it's a plausible enough possibility and that means I need to explore it."

Dustin puts the finishing touches on an impromptu programme he's written to extract the addresses and give him names and locations. "So you think the guys in Washington and the bees in Manhattan might be from the same people?"

"It seems unlikely on the face of it, if you take into account the vast difference in sophistication and scale of the attacks," says Mark, feverishly scanning through the results that are coming up on his multiple screens. "But maybe that's their aim – maybe they want it to appear that Iron Man can't handle all of this."

"Don't you think they've got a point, though?" Dustin asks. His voice is carefully casual but when Mark glances up at him his expression is nothing but. "Don't you think you're getting a bit… overwhelmed?"

Mark blinks. "Excuse me?"

"You're running yourself ragged, Mark, me and Chris both think so-"

"It's Chris and I," says Mark.

"What?"

"It's 'Chris and I both think so', not me and Chris," Mark tells him. "And thank you, but I think I've got this under control."

Dustin doesn't pursue the matter, but out of the corner of his eye Mark can see Dustin still looking at him long after Mark has turned back to his code. On some level Dustin has a point, but it's not something that Mark can let himself concede. It boils down to one thing – to Yinsen in his last moments, face preternaturally peaceful, reaching for Mark and saying, _don't waste your life_. And Eduardo, Eduardo saying, _I didn't sleep, Mark_ , perpetually under fire from all sides without a modicum of the respect that Mark and Iron Man have enjoyed.

There are stakes here that Mark himself is only beginning to realise the magnitude of. And his response – his only possible response – must be to press on.

"JARVIS, what's the status on the comparison tests?" asks Mark

" _Estimated completion time is two hours_ ," JARVIS replies." _While you are waiting, sir, might I remind you of the fabric composites you requested I look into the other day?_ "

Oh, that. Mark had mentioned it on impulse, and promptly forgotten it in the ensuing ruckus. "Thanks for bringing it up. Have you found anything?"

" _Of course_ ," says JARVIS, " _so far the best option is an elastane blend incorporating heat-resistant Kevlar micro-fibres. That should provide protection from small-calibre bullets._ "

Mark nods. "Good. Could you render that? You know the colours."

" _I might suggest including mesh webbing, sir. That should enable the wearer to glide short distances._ "

"Very perceptive, JARVIS, thank you," says Mark, examining the render and pointedly ignoring the way Dustin is giving him the side-eye. "Yes, it looks good. Can we fabricate that now?"

" _Certainly._ " Then JARVIS pauses, as if uncertain. " _In fact, sir, I took the liberty of putting the costume into production ahead of your approval._ "

It turns out that JARVIS has also taken the liberty to add spider emblems on the front and back of the costume.

"Is he allowed to even do that?" asks Dustin. "Because that's just… kind of really scary."

" _I'll take that as a compliment, Mr. Moskovitz_ ," says JARVIS shortly.

The costume looks good. It's overall a shade darker than Eduardo's current one, but that should make it easier for him to blend in at night-time. When Mark picks it up he finds that it's startlingly light, considering how sturdy it feels. They will probably have to alter it to accommodate Eduardo's web shooters, but that aside, it's better than Mark imagined.

"I'm confused," says Dustin, folding his arms across his chest. "How exactly do you _know_ Spiderman?"

Mark shrugs. "We move in the same circles."

"So, like, he has an apartment in NYC and everything? Do you guys just meet up and chill?" Dustin asks. "Wow, I always thought he'd just… hang from the rafters somewhere during his downtime."

"That's bats, Dustin," Mark tells him. "Bats hang from rafters."

Dustin waves his hand dismissively. "Same difference," he says. "So are you going to drop it off?"

"What, in New York?"

"I don't see why not," says Dustin, having clearly forgotten his task of keeping an eye on Mark. "Don't you break the sound barrier on a regular basis?"

 

 

Mark meets Eduardo on the roof of a building halfway across town from the apartment where he actually lives. It is easy to spot him in his costume, perched on the ladder of a water tank.

He rises to his feet the moment Mark arrives. "What's happened?"

Mark lands with a thunk and straightens up, raising the visor of his helmet. "Nothing's happened," he says, perturbed. "Is there something wrong?"

"Right, I thought – because you called-" Eduardo begins.

"Oh, no," says Mark. "I've got something for you." He reaches into the storage pouch he's secured to his torso and pulls out the new costume. "It's just something JARVIS mocked up – JARVIS is my A.I. – it's not... Well. It should help."

Eduardo takes the bundle and unrolls it, examining the spider emblems and rubbing the fabric between his gloved fingers. "You made me a new costume?"

"It incorporates Kevlar microfibers and JARVIS included mesh webbing," Mark tells him. "You'll still need to alter it for your web shooters."

"It's incredible. The grips on these boots-" Eduardo breathes, examining the grain on the flexible but slightly thicker weave – JARVIS has really outdone himself, Mark thinks – "I don't know what to say."

"It's the least I could do," says Mark, hoping that he doesn't appear as flustered as he suddenly feels. "I thought you could do with the upgrade. If there are any issues just give me a call and I'll have JARVIS look into it."

"Thanks," Eduardo tells him, and Mark finds himself suddenly, painfully, wishing that he could see the look on Eduardo's face. "Thanks for this. You really didn't need to, but I appreciate it."

Mark nods and doesn't look at Eduardo; doesn't say you're welcome, because he should have done this years ago. He should have been there to figure out these things with Eduardo. He should have known.

Eduardo seems to sense Mark's unease, because he changes the subject quickly after that. "So, any idea where those bees might have come from?"

"I've been looking into it," Mark replies. "I took apart one of the bees, and JARVIS has been running tests to see if they match any existing weapons tech designs."

"And you got those designs by-"

"Hacking into the systems, yes," says Mark. "It's not exactly legal."

Eduardo nods, and laughs. "When has that ever stopped you?"

"Precisely."

" _My apologies for interrupting, but the tests are now complete,_ " says JARVIS discreetly in Mark's ear.

"One second, JARVIS," says Mark. He turns to Eduardo. "Hey, can I use your phone?"

Eduardo pulls it out of his utility belt and hands it to Mark.

"I need a screen," Mark explains, tapping on the keys of Eduardo's smartphone. "I'm just going to have JARVIS access your phone remotely."

"Can you do that?" asks Eduardo curiously.

"I'm doing it now." One last password, and the words _WELCOME, MR. ZUCKERBERG_ appear on Eduardo's screen.

"Wow," says Eduardo, peering down at the phone. "I feel slightly violated."

"You need to stop using your mother's birthday as a password," Mark tells him. "JARVIS, could you put yourself on speakerphone?"

" _Certainly sir,_ " says JARVIS. " _I have identified a number of critical matches. All of them appear to be located in the Hammer Industries network._ "

"That was the first one I hacked. It should have come up."

" _They were placed in a ghost directory that only came up on a second search_ ," JARVIS explains.

"So it's Hammer?" Eduardo asks.

Mark nods. "Seems like it. JARVIS, could you show me the matches?"

" _The schematic for the flight system HB-129 is the closest match thus far to that of the mechanised bee,_ " JARVIS tells him, bringing the comparisons up on the screen. " _The bee's motherboard and the central command system are also extremely similar to a drone army prototype from six months ago_."

"How about the blasters?" asks Mark.

" _More of the same, sir,_ " JARVIS replies, " _The firearms technology seems to best resemble experimental designs still under testing stages at Hammer Industries. I believe we have the source of your bee problem._ "

"Thank you, JARVIS."

"What are you planning to do about it?" Eduardo asks. "You could notify SHIELD, but I doubt there's much they can legally do because of how you've accessed this information."

"Somehow I doubt that SHIELD is very concerned with doing things the legal way, but you have a point," says Mark. "Unless we can find some other evidence that points to Hammer this isn't going to be good enough."

"You pissed him off, didn't you?" says Eduardo. "At the Senate hearing."

"I piss a lot of people off all the time. It's kind of become a thing."

"I'm afraid I have to agree." It's almost warm, the way Eduardo says it. "You can be very… _you_."

It's nowhere near a compliment, but it's certainly not _lawyer up, asshole_ , and Mark will take what he can get.

"I'll need to follow up on those background checks, see what else I can dig up-" Mark starts to say, but he is promptly interrupted by JARVIS.

" _Sir, there's a phone call from Mr. Hughes. He says it's extremely urgent._ "

"Put him through," says Mark. "It's Chris," he tells Eduardo.

For the first time since the day Mark returned from Afghanistan, Chris sounds genuinely panicked.

"Mark, you need to come back right now," says Chris. "There's a problem."

"I'm in New York," Mark tells him. "What is it?"

"Facebook's under attack."

 

 

Considering that Facebook is facing possibly its worst technical crisis in years, everyone at the office appears admirably calm when Mark returns. The only signs that something is seriously wrong are the phones that are ringing non-stop from almost every desk, the frantic clattering of fingers on keyboards, and the fact that all the executive officers of Facebook and key figures from Tech and Development have been summoned to the main conference room.

Samy, the Vice President of Engineering, begins to update Mark the moment he steps through the doors of the building. "It's some sort of DDoS attack, but on a far more massive scale than we ever prepared for. We've already gone down in most of Asia and parts of Europe."

"What do you mean when you say massive?" Mark asks, striding through the office to sweep up his laptop before heading over to the conference room.

"We're looking at millions of bots," says Samy. "The servers just can't handle it, and neither can our fallback hosting."

Mark breathes deeply. They need to stay calm. "We have protocols, stick to them. What's the situation at our data centres?"

"Dustin's gone over to the Santa Clara site to give the guys there a hand at patching us back online."

"Good," says Mark. If he can console in directly to the hardware he'll be able to have a clearer picture of what's going on. "How are we monitoring the traffic?"

"We bridged in an old hub," says Chris.

Mark nods. Crude, but workable. Now Mark needs to see exactly what is going wrong. It's a good thing he stopped off at his place to take off the suit; they're in for a long night.

Samy is right – this is a distributed denial of service attack, but on an unprecedented scale. Something or someone has seized control of millions of computers, which are jamming the Facebook servers with more traffic than it can handle. Every time the technicians attempt any sort of re-boot, the attacks merely start up again. Similarly, shifting servers appears to be of no help at all, as is the case with any proxies they have been using.

"It's like whatever we do, they just get round it," says Mike, one of the developers. "Do you have any idea who might be able to target us on this scale?"

"I might," Mark replies grimly. He should never have underestimated Justin Hammer, rubbish firewalls or not. "Make sure we retain logs of everything."

"I can't get a feel of where these attacks are coming from," says Chris, from where he is monitoring the traffic. "It's definitely not from a specific country, so we can't block off IP addresses by region. They've literally taken control of machines all over the world."

In that instant Mark is reminded of JARVIS accessing Eduardo's phone, the words _WELCOME, MR. ZUCKERBERG_ coming up on the screen.

"Your phone," says Mark suddenly, swiping Chris' Blackberry off the conference table. "Do you have Facebook on your phone?"

Chris looks at him, startled. "Yes, of course-"

It takes Mark half a minute to get into the data history of Chris' phone. He hands it back to Chris. "Look at that."

Chris glances at the screen. "My phone's been compromised."

Mark checks his own laptop. "So has my computer," he says, voice tight. "And, I'm willing to bet, every computer in this office."

Samy looks confused. "What does that even mean-"

"The compromised machines," says Mark, "every single bot that's attacking us – they're computers belonging to Facebook users. If we have six hundred million active members, that's exactly the number of bots that are attacking us."

There is a stunned silence in the room as everyone pauses to take that in.

"But who could access all the users?" asks Chris.

"Not who, _what_ ," says Mark, with dawning realisation. "Think of the bees."

"The bees?" Samy repeats.

"If someone with access to the Facebook system can infect it with some sort of virus – a queen bee, if you like – that virus might be able to make drones of all computers accessing the website," says Mark. "Whatever we do, the virus learns. We haven't taken it out by moving servers or using proxies because it's controlling all the drones from within _our system_." Mark closes his eyes for a brief moment, and exhales a breath. "It's _brilliant_."

"You mean it's terrible," says Chris. "Also, Audrey has been standing outside the door for the past five minutes."

"Tell her to hold on."

Mark turns to the room. "We need to let Facebook crash."

"But we don't crash, _ever_ ," says Samy faintly.

"Well," says Mark. "We're about to. Tell tech to stop trying to keep parts of the network up. Put a status message up, tweet an apology, whatever we have to do. We need to take everything offline, go into our own system, and find that virus."

"Mark, it looks urgent," Chris tells him, pointing to the piece of paper that Audrey is now holding up. She has written _IT'S THE FBI_ on it in block letters. As Mark looks up, she holds up a second paper that says, _AND THE CIA_.

"Your computer has been calling me, Mr. Zuckerberg," says Audrey when Mark flings open the door of the conference room. "Jarvis? He says there are agents with a search warrant at your house right now. The last time he called they were trying to override him."

"They can't override JARVIS," says Mark, "it's impossible."

"I think they figured that out," Audrey replies dryly, "so they just applied explosives to the locks of your front door. You should probably go make sure everything's okay."

"Shit." Mark turns to Chris. "I need to get back."

"I'll go with you, Samy can hold the fort," says Chris. "We'll take my car."

 

 

There are five black vans parked outside Mark's house when they arrive, and a few men are already in the process of transferring a large crate into one of the vans.

"Is that my-" Mark begins, clambering out of Chris' car and dashing towards them. "That's my suit! Who authorised you to take this?"

Another man emerges from the house. "Sir, I would request for you to step away from my colleagues," he says. "I have a search warrant here that allows me to seize any and all property that may be used as evidence against you."

"What grounds do you have-" Mark explodes, but Chris is already coming up to them and putting a hand on Mark's shoulder.

"If you don't mind, officer, we'd like to know what's going on," he tells the man politely, putting on the professional, slightly apologetic smile he normally uses for when Mark has inadvertently offended someone at a shareholders' lunch.

"We were alerted by Hammer Industries of a hacking attempt made by Mr. Zuckerberg earlier today-"

"Attempt-" begins Mark indignantly, but Chris elbows him expertly in the ribs.

"Yes, officer," says Chris, "is there any reason why you saw the need to take the suits?"

"Yes," says the man. "That's the second thing. When we came in, we found this." He indicates the contents of a second crate that the men are now carrying out. Inside it is the bee that Mark had dismantling for tests.

Mark's heart sinks. "You can't be serious," he says. "You can't possibly think that that bee was-"

"Mr. Zuckerberg," the man cuts in, "I am _this_ close to arresting you on suspicion of manufacturing that bee, and the ones in the attack on Lower Manhattan. And believe me, I _will_ arrest you when my men finish drawing their conclusions. Until then we will be confiscating your suits and all your hardware for further investigation. You need to step away."

"That's ridiculous," Mark tells him. "You know full well that I _contained_ that attack; that if not for Spiderman's and my intervention, downtown Manhattan would have been irrevocably damaged."

"Mark," says Chris warningly.

"I want to know who put you up to this," Mark snaps, pointing a finger in the man's face. "Was it Justin Hammer? Or Senator Stern?"

"Mr. Zuckerberg, you need to step away from me _now_ ," says the man.

" _Mark_ ," Chris repeats. "Stand down."

Mark rounds on him. "Are you expecting me to just sit back and let them take all of this?"

Chris holds out a hand. "Yes, I am," he says carefully. "There's nothing you can do about this right now, and we need you at Facebook. You're going to have to let this one slide. We'll deal with this later."

"Chris, you can't-"

"You asked me to help you be Iron Man," Chris tells Mark, his voice entirely serious. "Now I need you to listen to me."

For a moment Mark just stares at Chris in disbelief that he would ask Mark to leave this. To walk away when everything Mark has worked for is being taken away in those vans. Yet a small part of Mark, the coldest, most logical part, has already acknowledged that Chris is entirely correct. He cannot fix this problem, not right now – but he can go back to the offices of Facebook and make sure that they find that virus.

"Fine," says Mark. "I'm listening."

"Okay." Chris takes a deep breath. "Okay, good. I'll contact Legal to see what we can do about this situation, but for now let's get back to the office."

Silently, numbly, they climb back into Chris' car. But when they set off Chris doesn't head in the direction of the Facebook office; he merely rounds a corner and stops the car some distance down a smaller road.

"You hacked into Hammer Industries' systems," says Chris, turning round to look at Mark. "You must have found something."

"The designs for the bees were in Hammer Industries' ghost directory," Mark replies. "I don't know if Hammer is even capable of something like the virus we have right now, but he's the sort who would do it just for the symmetry."

Chris looks grave. "Pinning the bees on you, taking down Facebook – he's trying to destroy you, Mark."

"I can see that, thank you," says Mark, staring resolutely out of the window.

This has always been a possibility – someone targeting not only Iron Man but everything else in Mark's life. Chris has so far done a rather admirable job of not saying 'I told you so', because this has been something he has tried to bring up to Mark ever since Mark had made that announcement. And now Mark doesn't even have his suit for whatever it is Hammer might try next.

Mark turns to Chris. "I need to make a call."

 

 

Christy does not look pleased when she answers the video call. "How did you get this number?"

Mark gives her his most opaque smile. "You need to get better firewalls for the SHIELD database."

"Right, because the ones you had for Facebook are working so well," says Christy, scoffing when she sees Mark's scowl. "What is it? I'm busy."

"You're not busy, you're in New Mexico. Nothing happens in New Mexico."

Christy rolls her eyes dramatically. "You'll be surprised. Look, Zuckerberg, you're calling me on a SHIELD satellite phone and it's going to cost both of us. I'm giving you three minutes, now talk."

"Justin Hammer's responsible for the bees, and possibly for the fact that my suits have been taken," Mark tells her.

"Okay, and how is this my problem?"

"This is your problem because they're trying to pin the bees on me using the one you sent me as evidence," Mark snaps. "You said SHIELD handles superhuman threats. I'm out of commission and I'm certain Justin Hammer is going to try something else. Is there anyone you can put on standby for this?"

A person in the background says something to Christy; she covers the camera and mutes audio as she replies.

Some moments later, Christy returns to the camera and sighs. "Seriously. What do you take us for? Security guards?"

"People's lives are at stake-"

"The way I see it right now, what's at stake is your company and your reputation. And SHIELD doesn't waste its resources fixing things for superheroes who can't keep their cover." Christy clears her throat. "That being said, Hammer is a threat and you need to find a way to force him to show his hand."

"How?"

Christy raises one eyebrow. "You successfully built a miniaturised arc reactor and hacked the systems of six major weapons developers and SHIELD," Christy tells him, "I'm sure you can think of something."

"Great, that's very helpful," Mark replies.

"If you need backup, you might want to consider calling Spiderman. He can be quite useful if he's not losing his shit over something or other," Christy adds, making a face. "It's been more than three minutes, I'm hanging up."

Mark looks down at his phone. "Well, that was useful."

Samy and the others are still in the midst of locating the virus when Mark and Chris return to the Facebook office. Mark's chief operating officer is camped out in the next room with the Communications team, fielding phone calls and saying that, yes, the whole site has been shut down for the next couple of hours in order to deal with the attack.

Mark can remember a time when the very idea of Facebook going down was unthinkable to him; remembers telling Eduardo as much. Some part of him is still reeling from the shock of seeing the status message that is now the front page of Facebook, but there are much more pressing concerns at the moment, like Hammer's next move.

"Mr. Zuckerberg," says Audrey, "Mr. Saverin is on the phone for you. I can tell him to call back if you're-"

"No," Mark tells her, standing up so quickly that he bumps the table and causes Samy's coffee to slosh out of its cup. "I'll take it."

"Mark, I have photos," says Eduardo the moment Mark answers the call. There is the sound of wind in the background; he must be on top of a building somewhere. "Section sixteen of the Hammer Industries facility in Queens. I found his manufacturing line for the bees."

"That's great, because Hammer's trying to pin it on me," Mark replies.

" _What?_ "

"They've taken my suits, Wardo," Mark tells him, "if Hammer tries anything else I won't be able to do a thing, and Christy has been of no help at all-"

"Christy?" It is incredible how much incredulity and affront Eduardo can pack into one word. "You called Christy and you didn't call me?"

"This isn't the time, and yes, I thought she could pull some strings through SHIELD," says Mark. "Where are you right now?"

"I'm on the roof of the _Daily Bugle_ , ready to turn in the photographs if you want."

"The _Daily Bugle_ hates you," Mark tells him.

"I know," says Eduardo. "But they'll like this."

He sounds so genuinely pleased that for a moment Mark doesn't know what to say. And Mark discovers that it is possible to physically ache for something, because that's what's happening right now.

Eventually he settles for, "Thanks."

"Not a problem. Breaking and entering – all in a day's work," Eduardo replies.

"I owe you one," Mark tells him. He takes a deep breath. "And I'm glad we're still – I'm glad you have my back, Wardo."

"Holy _shit_."

Mark flinches. "Sorry?"

"Oh, _no_ ," says Eduardo. " _No_."

"Right," Mark says abruptly, feeling suddenly cold. "I understand if that was a little too forward but that was hardly a proportionate reaction-"

"Mark, you don't understand," Eduardo interrupts. "There is a _fuck ton of bees_ coming up over the horizon."

 

  


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"I need all the extra units we can spare," says Mark, striding into the conference room and sweeping the pizza boxes and bags of twinkies off the table to make space for the laptop screens and rack server that the interns are carting in. Samy barely manages to save his coffee mug.

"What are you doing?" asks Chris, pushing aside a couple of chairs in order to help Mark set up the cables as quickly as possible.

"I'm uploading JARVIS," Mark replies, plugging in an unassuming-looking flash drive. "If I set him up remotely he'll be able to give me satellite views of the bees in New York City."

"Satellites?" Chris repeats. "How exactly are you going to remotely access JARVIS when half your hardware has been confiscated–"

" _Not to worry, Mr Hughes,_ " says JARVIS suddenly, sounding slightly tinnier than usual when played from one of the intern's desk speakers. " _I am currently residing within the Google servers, and am keen to avail myself of the amenities._ "

There is a flicker, before satellite images of New York appear on the screens.

"Is that Google Earth in real-time?" gasps one of the interns.

"That looks bad," Chris murmurs, looking at the swarm amassing near the Empire State Building.

"Give Spiderman coordinates for the queen bees, JARVIS," says Mark, examining the images. "Shit. There're at least three of them."

Chris shakes his head. "He's not going to be able to handle it alone, is he?"

At least they know the fastest way to take down the swarms, Mark thinks grimly. The only problem is that the bees will be equally aware of that strategy, and Eduardo has neither the firepower nor the backup that Mark had when he'd destroyed the first queen bee.

He looks from the bees on the screen to Samy and the tech team on the opposite end of the table. Justin Hammer certainly knows how to hit hard.

Mark realises, suddenly and horribly, that he has never been so helpless in his life. Not with the stakes set so high. Because it's no longer merely Mark's reputation and Mark's company on the line – Eduardo is out there fending off the bees alone and there is nothing Mark can do without his suit.

"Mark," says Samy, head jerking up. "We've isolated the virus. Sort of."

"What do you mean, sort of?" asks Chris.

Mark goes over to look at Samy's screens. The scanning programmes they've hastily modified to keep up with the massive scan have located a vast number of innocuous-looking extensions on the system that have in reality been compromised.

"Why are these extensions still listed here?" asks Mark, running through the table. "It says here they're clean."

"That's the beauty of the virus," Samy explains. "It replicates itself but deletes all traces as it moves from one folder of the system to the other. This is why it took us so long to actually locate it. If it's moving through our systems-"

"We can close it off by shutting down parts of our servers," Mark finishes. "Good work. But that still doesn't answer the question of how to get rid of it-"

Or perhaps there _is_ something Mark can do.

"Mark?" Chris asks. "You just stopped mid-sentence…"

Mark doesn't reply. Instead, he sits down abruptly in front of the keyboard and begins to type. He can access the Hammer Industries system in his sleep by now, and the fact the he no longer really cares about avoiding detection merely speeds up the process. It's all a bit of a hack-and-slash job, but in no time Mark has linked several of Facebook's secondary directories to Hammer's.

"I've found a new home for our self-replicating virus," says Mark, leaning back in his seat. "And it was easier than installing a rootkit."

"Please don't tell me you've installed rootkits," Chris sighs, but he comes round anyway to look at Mark's handiwork. "You're right," Chris says slowly. "It's clearing out of our system."

They watch with bated breath as the virus continues to delete all traces of itself while replicating onto Hammer's directories.

"It's fitting that the virus' greatest feature is also its key weakness," Mark murmurs. "They've called the root file 'COLONY'. Now it's merely covering more ground than Hammer intended."

"Will Hammer know that it's you?" asks Chris.

"Most definitely," Mark replies. "Those agents will be knocking down our doors in no time."

"Then why-"

"Don't you see?" says Mark, barely able to keep the triumph out of his voice. "If the virus colonises all of Hammer Industries' end users and launches a denial of service attack on the main system-"

"It might stop the bees," Chris finishes.

Mark nods. "It might stop the bees."

" _Sir_ ," says JARVIS, " _Spiderman appears to have disabled one of the queen bees, but the ensuing damage has been rather extensive. I have put in multiple calls to Agent Lee, but it is unclear if SHIELD agents have been deployed._ "

"How long do you think the virus will take?" asks Chris.

"Looking at the logs," says Samy, "it took two hours for our systems to be completely compromised."

Two hours is far too long. Mark looks at the screen, where JARVIS has marked out the spots where one of the bee swarms has been taken out. Many of the buildings are smoking extensively, and it is entirely impossible to make out where Eduardo might be in all of this. Feeds from the police department and fire brigade that JARVIS has helpfully put up along with the images reveal that the evacuation process is going far too slowly. Without any doubt, news stations all over the country are demanding to know where Iron Man is.

"Mark!"

Dustin bursts into the conference room, almost crashing into the rack server as he does so. "Your suit!" he exclaims, holding up the Mark V briefcase.

"How do you have that?" asks Mark, reaching for it immediately.

"I loaded it on the Ducati by accident and took it with me to Santa Clara," says Dustin. "Sorry about that."

"No, don't be sorry, you're a _genius_ -" Chris begins, but is cut off by the sound of Mark putting on the suit.

A couple of the interns look like they might actually spontaneously combust from excitement as the helmet comes up around Mark's head.

"Keep an eye on the virus," Mark tells them. He turns to Chris. "I'm using the window."

 

 

The sun has set by the time Mark reaches Fifth Avenue, but New York City is ablaze.

" _Sir, the bees seem to be employing a defensive strategy,_ " JARVIS informs him.

Mark looks up at the ten or so drones that are hovering around the Empire State Building, separate from the rest. Clinging to the building are two massive queen bees, motionless amidst the chaos. Below, military tanks are rolling down the street, drawing fire from the bees but doing very little else by way of taking them out.

"JARVIS, give me an update on Spiderman's location," Mark says urgently as he blasts two bees that are heading straight towards him.

" _He appears to be proceeding down 42nd Street towards Lexington Avenue," replies JARVIS. "The bees have a lock on him. If I may suggest, sir-_ "

"I'm heading over," says Mark.

" _I thought so_ ," agrees JARVIS. " _You have two on your tail at this moment, sir._ "

Mark curves suddenly through the air in an abrupt wave, causing the two bees behind him to fly directly into each other.

" _Very nicely done, I must say._ "

"I do my best," Mark replies, soaring upwards for a few moments before dipping back down to building-level in order to come up behind a handful of bees that are zigzagging viciously after Eduardo. "Do you think we can use the anti-personals on this bunch? The processing units are under the wing flaps."

" _There's no harm in trying, sir,_ " JARVIS says, while faint blue targets appear on Mark's heads-up display. " _I'll be precise._ "

The bullets get right into the processing units of all but two of the bees, which are easily taken down by Mark's repulsor blast.

Mark flies up next to Eduardo, who looks badly singed and is clearly favouring his left side as he swings back up onto the roof of a building to catch his breath.

"Why can't you _ever_ turn up on time?" he asks when he sees Mark, but the relief is wholly evident in his voice.

"I'm here now," Mark replies, before blasting another stray bee that comes up near them.

"My hero," says Eduardo. He's bent at the waist now, clutching his side. "The new costume's great, by the way."

"You'll have to thank JARVIS for that," says Mark distractedly. "I need to get you somewhere safe."

"You need to take care of the bees," Eduardo corrects him. "I'll be fine."

"You'll be a sitting duck."

" _Mark._ "

Mark has no opportunity to argue, however, because a second wave of bees materialises from the opposite side of the building.

"Oh, fuck," groans Eduardo, as another row of bees appears behind Mark. They are entirely surrounded.

" _Perhaps it's time to use the laser gun_ ," says JARVIS mildly.

Mark nods. "Stay down," he tells Eduardo, holding out his arm to deploy the laser gun. "This will be pretty cool."

Or pretty dangerous. He has never used the laser gun before; it is a single-use weapon that Mark had included experimentally, and there are still massive issues with aim and precision. Either way, though, he'll have to make this work.

Before he can activate the gun, however, something strange happens. The bees' wings stop moving.

They hang there, suspended for a long moment, before beginning to drop like flies.

It's the virus, Mark thinks breathlessly. The virus worked.

"I don't know what you did," Eduardo murmurs, "but that is pretty fucking cool."

"Thanks," Mark replies. "JARVIS, I'd like to make a phone call to Justin Hammer."

" _Hammer Industries' voice over internet protocol phones appear to be out of commission, sir,_ " says JARVIS, " _shall I contact him on his personal number?_ "

"I didn't know we had his personal number, but sure," says Mark.

Justin Hammer sounds completely fraught when he answers the phone. "Who is this?"

"This is Mark Zuckerberg," Mark tells him, by way of greeting. "I'm just calling to say, good effort, I hear the _Daily Bugle_ is looking into giving you a gold star."

"Mark, hey, buddy-"

"Just as a suggestion, while you're rotting in jail for the next decade or so, you might want to look into building a better firewall."

 

 

Quite possibly, Mark's proudest moment that year is being pricked in the chest as Senator Stern grudgingly pins on his second medal of commendation for defeating the two bee attacks and apprehending Justin Hammer.

His gladdest moments, on the other hand, include having Dustin call him to say that Facebook is up and running again, and seeing his suits shamefacedly returned by the same government suits that had taken them away (a process expedited by a number of judicious phone calls by one Agent Christy Lee).

The best moment, however, is this:

Eduardo comes in through the hole in Mark's roof.

That in itself is not unusual, apart from the fact that Eduardo isn't in his Spiderman costume. He's wearing jeans and an olive green shirt with the collar open, and after he lands he pulls the neatly-folded costume from his bag.

"Hello," says Mark, holding out his hand for the costume. "I assume that needs some mending."

Eduardo nods. "It's a bit singed in places. Also, I might need a couple of extras. Things can get quite inconvenient on laundry day."

"I'll see what JARVIS can do about it."

It is a relief to see Eduardo's face after all this while, to have an actual conversation while able to see his every expression. There is a specific way his eyes crinkle when he is pleased and relaxed, which Mark has forgotten up until this point. The delighted tilt of his chin, the casual way he rests his weight on one foot, all of it approaching something like easy openness.

"You know," Eduardo tells Mark, "that hole is a serious security risk."

"It wasn't a risk until you started using it to trespass my property," Mark replies. "I take it you haven't had one of Chris' talks about using a door."

"I take it you haven't started working on my security clearance," Eduardo counters.

"In case you hadn't noticed, I've been a bit busy."

"Not too busy to take me off the NYPD orange list, though."

Mark shrugs. "It was the least I could do. New York needs Spiderman. And I could do with a little help every now and then."

And Eduardo smiles, and smiles, widely and warmly enough that it's got to hurt, except that Mark is smiling too, because they are each both bruised and broken but somehow on the trajectory towards being fixed.

 

  


[](http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/1439/salon.png)

  


_(Click thumbnail to enlarge)_  
[[Text-only version]](http://bysine.livejournal.com/27052.html#cutid4)  



	3. Chapter 3

**Epilogue**

"Just to make things clear, are you debriefing me on the circumstances following my announcement," says Mark, "or is this about the Avengers Initiative?"

Across the table, Nick Fury scowls. "You weren't supposed to be looking at that."

"You need better firewalls," Mark says simply. "I have a couple of question about the files-"

"The only file you need to concern yourself with is yours," Fury interrupts, sliding the folder towards him.

"Do I look at the patch or the eye?" asks Mark. "Just so we don't get off on the wrong foot."

" _Zuckerberg_."

Mark purses his lips. "I'll go for the eye. And I've read that. Cover to cover. You want me in, but you're not sure if I play well with others. The short answer is no, I don't."

"I notice you've been very chummy with Spiderman," Fury says blandly, but the way he looks at Mark is sharp and weighing.

"I notice he wasn't on the list," Mark counters. "I read his file. The report is at least five years out of date, his evaluator was possibly biased, and-"

"You just resent the fact that Agent Lee put down Spiderman's one weakness as being 'Mark Zuckerberg'," says Fury.

"You're not doing a very good job of convincing me to join you."

"I'm not here to convince you," says Fury, cocking his head to one side. "I think you've already made up your mind, and you're here to talk terms."

"That is somewhat correct," Mark replies.

"Somewhat?" Fury repeats.

"Actually," says Eduardo, coming in from the window to the great surprise of the SHIELD agent standing below it, " _we're_ here to talk terms."

"And when we're done I'll take a look at the gaping holes in your system," Mark says, in an attempt to be placating.

Fury actually chuckles. It is truly terrifying.

"So," says Eduardo. "First things first." He pulls a chair from the far end of the room and sits down beside Mark.

"Nobody has to take care of a chicken."

  
**End**   


**Author's Note:**

> "It is to be called **Never give all the heart** , and it is a fusion in which Mark Zuckerberg is Iron Man and Eduardo Saverin is Spiderman. And it is meant to be half cracky and half serious and... this is just idek." Clearly I would never have finished this story if not for , and , whose responses to this fell neatly in the category of 'YES DO IT', for which I am very grateful. ♥ Huge thanks also to for fanning the flames of my TSN feels, and my housemate KY (who probably won't read this) for going HOMG every time I told her the word count (until she realised that I wasn't... anywhere near finishing it).
> 
> Geeky things – I very much based Mark's tech off of the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of things; chronologically speaking, this would probably take place around a similar period as _Iron Man 2_ , although clearly the fact that Mark is Mark and not Tony Stark means that things unfolded very differently. Also, the speed at which Mark develops his Iron Man suits is definitely not at Tony Stark levels, so in my mind the older suits (Mark III, for example) were a lot less spiffy than Tony's. On the other hand, I did borrow some elements of the comic-versions of characters like Justin Hammer, so it's all pretty mixed. Specs for Eduardo's new suit from Tony Stark's redesign in _The Amazing Spider-man #529_ , beautifully giffed [here](http://catching-everlark.tumblr.com/post/22921930589/amazing-spider-man-529).
> 
> I owe a huge debt to all the amazing fic that already exists in TSN fandom – particularly the incredible fandom staple that is [Boy Falls From The Sky](http://archiveofourown.org/works/249196), because I suspect that everyone who has read that amazing fic has a bit of a headcanon for Spiderwardo already. Also, people on Tumblr who do those little gif fusions of Iron Man and Spiderman are my favourite people ever – in a fit of frivolity I [made one too](http://barkerandlovelace.tumblr.com/private/23664958058/tumblr_m4iu9uSVPH1qa3v9j) (gifs not mine). 
> 
> Music & inspiration – in addition to the mix above, I listened to the Iron Man soundtrack (which is ACE, I highly recommend it) and [tracks](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2wMrpNyWyY) [by](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m7e7tCn7Bk) [The Glitch Mob](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVuqB2PbhwU). I also watched these fanvids: [TSN 'We Are Young'](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e0qUmWaLD8&feature=my_liked_videos&list=LLFyyWblLvlFEaPJIBKKfd3w), ['We Used to Be Friends'](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAQ_SORU5w0&feature=my_liked_videos&list=LLFyyWblLvlFEaPJIBKKfd3w) far too many times. They're pretty great. And THIS: [Justin Hammer + Can't Touch This](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fxzvPg9fB4&feature=my_liked_videos&list=LLFyyWblLvlFEaPJIBKKfd3w). Best thing ever, hands down. I loved writing Justin Hammer and only wish he'd appeared more. 
> 
> Writing this fic has made me hopelessly pumped for _The Amazing Spider-Man_. Perhaps this is a good thing?


End file.
